Title: [Reflections on maternal techniques and the rearing of infants and young children in Cote d'Ivoire]

POPLINE Document Number: 076260

Author(s):

Dubois Le Bronnec C
Ferrari P

Source citation:

PSYCHIATRIE DE L ENFANT, 1991;34(2):543-630.

Abstract:

In 1985 the estimated population of the Ivory Coast was 10 million, and the annual rate of growth between 1965 and 1978 was 4%. The fertility rate is 50-60/1000 population. The hypothesis was advanced that certain aspects of traditional child rearing in the Ivory Coast modify its affective experiencing and its libidinal organization. Ivorian breast feeding, producing mother-infant fusion, is remarkably permissive until abrupt weaning, traditionally at 2 years of age, but more often between 18 and 20 months. The end of this idyllic fusion is a traumatic experience; at this time the tradition of carrying the child on the back in a fabric pocket takes over. This custom structures the body-ego of the infant, although the anxiety of abandonment as seen in psychiatric clinical experience plunges the Ivorian individual into sentiments of nonexistence, dissolution, and annihilation. Certain Ivorian children, sick people, or adolescents wandering through towns suffer grave cultural deprivation. Eventually, socializing with age or sibling group replaces the mother's body. Language education is traditionally the task of the grandparents and of the child community who help mold a social ego and an ethnic identity. In the socialization of the child important factors are lineage, the management of opposition and aggression, the extended family, the respective roles of father, mothers, and of the child community. The oedipal conflict is present in the structure of the child's personality but hardly ever in the form of a phallic confrontation between son and father.

Keywords:

Cote d'Ivoire
Child Rearing
Psychosocial Factors
Breastfeeding
Weaning
Personality Development
Family Relationships
Child Development
Mothers
Culture
Psychological Factors
Developing Countries
Africa, Western
Africa, Sub Saharan
Africa
Behavior
Infant Nutrition
Nutrition
Health
Personality
Family Characteristics
Family and Household
Biology
Parents